Motorola MILESTONE Becomes Official in Europe

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock you should know that the new Motorola Droid has been officially announced last week, with a Verizon debut on November 6th. What you may not know (and the Europeans will love it) is that the smartphone has been renamed as Motorola Milestone and that it’s going to be released on the old continent sooner than expected.

If previously announced for a debut on O2 in Germany, the new MILESTONE has gone official on the Motorola Germany website, and what’s interesting is that another German carrier, Vodafone, seems to be ready to take the phone out — probably with the same release date on November 9th.

Much like it’s Verizon sibling, the new Motorola MILESTONE brings 900/2100 UMTS/WCDMA support and quadband GSM, adds pinch-zoom multitouch, loses the Google Maps Navigation for turn-by-turn directions (Beta for US only) but adds MOTONAVE for a trial of easy search, lane guidance, mapping and points-of-interest. Other than that the hardware specifications are identical except for the QWERTZ keyboard, specific for the market.

Hailed as a “coming soon” mobile on Vodafone Germany, what we know so far is that Motorola MILESTONE will be priced close to 400 Euros (which is some $600 at today’s rate) on O2. Might as well be sold for that much in other European countries, too, but we have to assume that’s a carrier decision to make.